Warning that vulnerable countries like Mozambique, would be hit the hardest unless urgent action is taken by nations across the world UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said Cyclone Idai and its mounting death toll were “yet another alarm bell about the dangers of climate change”.
“Such events are becoming more frequent, more severe and more widespread, and this will only get worse if we do not act now”, said the UN chief.
“In the face of turbo-charged storms, we need revved up climate action”, he added, addressing reporters at UN Headquarters in New York.
The Secretary-General has convened a Climate Action Summit this September, to try and mobilise countries around the urgent need to reduce global warming to well under two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The death toll across Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, stands at around 700, but figures are expected to rise, with hundreds still missing.
An estimated three million have been affected, nearly two-thirds of them in Mozambique, where key port city Beira was “practically razed to the ground” while the farmland interior has been inundated, said Mr Guterres.
At least a million children need “urgent assistance”, and “we fear that whole villages have been washed away places we have yet to reach”, the UN chief added, with reports that $1 billion-worth of infrastructure has been destroyed.
He said citizens of the three southern African nations would need “strong, sustained support”.
The UN has launched a launched a $281.7 million revised flash appeal for Mozambique, designating the disaster a “scale-up emergency”, which is the most severe.
“I call on the international community to fund these appeals quickly and fully so that aid agencies can urgently ramp up their responses”, said Mr Guterres.
Conditions for survivors of Cyclone Idai remain dire, with devastation enormous and “an extremely high risk of diarrhoeal diseases like cholera”, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said, briefing reporters in Geneva.
Dr Djamila Cabral, WHO Representative in Mozambique, said that in Beira, Mozambique, more than 100,000 people have lost their homes and all of their possessions.
At least 1.8 million people need humanitarian assistance in Mozambique alone.
To prevent an outbreak of cholera, WHO is sending 900,000 doses of oral cholera vaccine to the devastated country that should arrive later this week.
Coordinating food needs for cyclone victims, the World Food Program (WFP) is targeting 1.7 million people in Mozambique with food assistance, 732,000 in Malawi and 270,000 people in Zimbabwe.
The assistance also includes logistics and emergency telecoms support.
Satellite imagery shows numerous flood plains including an “inland ocean” the size of Luxembourg, WFP said in a statement.
In a separate appeal, covering other needs, such as shelter, clean water and sanitation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and humanitarian partners called for $282 million to support victims in Mozambique.
According to OCHA, nearly half a million hectares of crops have been flooded, along with huge damage to homes and infrastructure.
